The present invention relates to an email system and more particularly to an email system for mobile devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones that enables email messages to played back as a voice message by way of a media player.
Many email systems have the capability to have email messages converted for playback as a voice message. An example of such a system is disclosed in US Patent Application Publication No. US 2007/0174396 A1, entitled: “Email Text-to Speech Conversion in Sender's Voice.” In addition to converting email messages to voice messages, the system disclosed in the '396 publication is also able to play the message back in the voice of the sender. As illustrated and described in the '396 publication, the system disclosed therein includes a unified messaging system and a user device that includes a text-to-speech engine. Such a configuration precludes the use of the email message to voice message feature on mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones since such mobile devices do not normally have the processing capabilities for handling a text to speech engine. Moreover, as mentioned above, the system disclosed in the '396 publication requires a unified messaging system to operate. As such, the system is not available for use in applications in systems which do not include a unified messaging system.
Thus, there is a need for a relatively less complex system that allows email text messages to be converted to voice messages and played back by mobile devices, such as PDAs and cellular phones.